2016 Ramsay Award Program Results

December 5, 2016

A Letter from President Carol Head

With Dr. Nahle, I’m delighted to announce our 2016 Ramsay Award Program recipients. It’s deeply gratifying to have the financial resources and scientific expertise to support new research work toward understanding this dreadful disease.

The Solve ME/CFS Initiative is a research organization with two distinct areas of focus. First, we do our own scientific research, under our Targeted Initiative Programs.

Second, the Ramsay Award Program, in its first year, is a core element in our support of the research of others. We understand that there are many researchers, from many fields of study, who are interested in exploring ME/CFS. The Ramsay Award Program offers seed grants to support the 12-month projects deemed most promising in moving the field of ME/CFS research forward. READ MORE

A Letter from Vice President of Research and Scientific Programs Dr. Zaher Nahle

We are thrilled to support the work of these talented scientists from around the world through the 2016 Ramsay Award Program. This has been a competitive process, meaning that we had more applications for funding than we were able to fulfill, and so a rigorous process was used to determine those who would be funded. All five teams are committed to ME/CFS research. Importantly, they are exploring diverse promising areas including autoimmunity, natural killer (NK) cell function, mitochondrial myopathies, metabolic profiling, viral infection, bioenergetics heath index characterization, low grade inflammation, immune dysfunction, diagnostic testing, and advanced brain imaging—to name a few.

These winning projects are interdisciplinary and draw on the complementary strength of investigators from different fields for strength, synergy, and cross-pollination. For instance, we brought together a UK-based team at the University College London, which has been at the forefront of B-cell biology and Rituximab-based therapy, and an Australian team that made pioneering contributions to the emerging area of metabolic profiling in ME/CFS. Now they will be working collaboratively to advance the science through their collective thinking. READ MORE

The Ramsay Award Program Has Three Main Objectives:

INVEST in original ideas that could clarify the onset, progression, root causes, and natural history of ME/CFS.

CREATE permissive environments to attract, support, and retain talent in the ME/CFS community and help awardees generate relevant data to compete for long-term federal funding.

FACILITATE collaboration and cross-pollination among dedicated researchers through the sharing of resources and access to additional programming and the organization’s network.